Welcome on to war listeners. I'm Captain Jake Maraldi.

Today we're talking autonomous systems with August Cole, the author of Ghost Fleet.

We'll talk about the advent of autonomous systems on the conventional battlefield in the cyber arena,

as well as in terms of planning and decision making.

The views expressed in this podcast for those of their respective participants

and do not

constitute the position in the United States government.

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Modern War Institute website and check out the new design at mwy.org.usma.edu.

I want to start off right up front with just sort of some definitional questions.

I know for me when the idea of doing a podcast on autonomous weapon systems was broached, was pitched to me,

I had the impression that I think a lot of people tend to have, which is I thought of, you know, Terminator or the Sentinel robots from the Matrix.

And I'm, and I want to get a feel for what, when we're talking about autonomy in a real world context, what that means.

Sure.

One of the challenges in understanding autonomy is that it doesn't really have a crystal clear definition.

I think it means different things to different people in the same way that current buzzword is like innovation or disruption to.

I sort of see it in context. I think when you look at autonomy and its definition in the context of understanding it,

it's almost easier actually to start to kind of comprehend

how it can be impactful in a technological sense, but also in a social sense, because

ultimately, you know, a machine is a product of its human creator, at least for now, until

machines start designing machines further. In the context of the third offset strategy that the Department of Defense is pursuing,

autonomy is a really important, I think, thread to pull,

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